s crispness was lost upon her. They could never have
quarreled. And Cecille had found a dressing-gown and hugged it tight
around her knees.

"Oh, not necessarily," Felicity said, abstractedly judicious. "Take me
for instance. I tried out four or five before I was inspired with the
one I'm wearing now. And a couple of them woulda knocked you dead,
take it from me. But the Vere de Vere stuff is bla now. Too phony.
There's no class to that kind of a monicker any more. And, believe me,
you can't afford to overlook any bets, nowadays; you got to have class
in everything. Something simple--something demure, that's what they
want. You got to be a lady."

And perhaps that is the best explanation, after all, of Felicity's
cultivation of the other girl. One cannot of oneself acquire breeding,
but it is possible to study technique. And I think Cecille's reason
for sticking to Felicity to the very end is clear too. Once, before
things happened, she was one of those people who believed in the
inevitable dark river, or swift oblivion, or an agony of remorse.
Believed pathetically.

I think Felicity Brown served her as a fearsome revelation of life
stripped to its rawest essentials,--a demonstration of shattering
truths which she would never have believed had she not stood by,
looking on. It held her as a snake's eye holds a bird, fascinated, in
deadly peril.

But they got on together. And as an economic arrangement it left
nothing to be desired. Cecille sewed well and was paid twenty-two
fifty a week. For her appearance in the Aero Octet Felicity received,
at the beginning, forty-five. This may astonish some. It shouldn't.

"I don't pay my girls much." So Fiegenspann, the proprietor of the
Roof Club, bluntly advised her, after she had passed his scrutiny and
been pronounced unusual enough even for the Aero Octet. "I don't have
to. Because the opporchoonities here are big--very big. And I like my
girls to be sociable. It makes business."

Felicity knew then that she had finally found the right man--the right
market. She appreciated his frankness and reciprocated.

"I get you," she said, "and forty-five it is. And I'm sociable, or I
can be, if sufficiently persuaded. Only let's be clear about that
point right now, at the start. You can send Opporchoonity's card in
whenever he calls and I'll be pleased to meet him. But he mustn't
crawl up to the curb in any Decrepid Four--understand? He's got to be